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Tesco’s fruit giant fronts mission to feed a million children

The Fruit Giant, Tesco, UK

UK – British supermarket giant Tesco is expanding its Free Fruit & Veg for Schools programme, doubling participation from 500 to over 1,000 schools from September 2026, with ambitions to double again from September next year.

The initiative, alongside grants and in-store schemes, aims to support 1m children across the UK in accessing healthier food, with customer purchases of fruit and veg triggering donations.

Tesco worked with BBH London to bring the programme to life through a large-scale film following a fruit giant travelling across the UK with a young companion, gradually shrinking as he shares pieces of himself with schools. Built from more than 105,000 photorealistic pieces of produce spanning 86 varieties, the friendly fruit giant character acts as a visual metaphor for Tesco’s brand values.

The move reflects a broader shift in value perception, as brands move beyond price and convenience toward care, connection and resourcefulness, as explored in our New Codes of Value macrotrend report.

Strategic opportunity

Embedding care into business is more important than ever. How might your brand turn routine purchases into visible, measurable acts of social good that consumers can actively shape and see in real time?

MIT launches AI foundation model to detect preclinical Alzheimer’s

US – A research team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has launched Fingers-7B, described as the first AI foundation model designed to support Alzheimer’s prevention through earlier risk detection.

Developed by the Fingerprint collaboration and presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations, the model combines lifestyle, clinical, genomic and proteomic data from tens of thousands of at-risk individuals to identify multi-omic biomarkers linked to preclinical Alzheimer’s.

Built using datasets from the global WW-Fingers network spanning 40 countries and 30,000 participants, Fingers-7B reportedly delivers four times more accurate preclinical diagnosis and 130% better responder stratification than previous methods.

The system can also generate personalised projections, estimating disease risk, cognitive decline timelines and intervention outcomes.

The model reflects a broader shift towards AI-enabled preventative healthcare, as explored in our Future Forecast 2024: Health & Wellness report, which outlines how predictive intelligence is increasingly applied to population-scale disease forecasting and intervention design.

AI imagery, The Future Laboratory, UK

Strategic opportunity

Health and wellness businesses can build products, services and experiences that anticipate risk, personalise intervention and shift value from treatment towards early support and long-term wellbeing

Stat: Millennials lead second-screen engagement for 2026 World Cup

Why Do It? by Nike, US

US – Millennials are set to be the most active second-screen users during the 2026 World Cup, challenging assumptions about Gen Z’s digital dominance.

According to a survey by ThinkNow, 78% of Millennial US soccer (football) fans are at least somewhat likely to use a second screen while watching matches – higher than Gen Z.

Second-screen behaviour is scaling alongside the sport’s growth. Football fandom in the US has increased by 17% since 2020, according to Harris Poll, expanding the addressable audience for digital engagement.

At the same time, interactive experiences are becoming an expected part of the viewing journey. Data from Nielsen shows that 26% of fans in host cities plan to engage with brand activations and sponsored experiences during matches.

This opens the door for brands to move from single-screen advertising to orchestrated multi-device ecosystems, where storytelling, commerce and interaction are intentionally split across platforms. Rather than optimising for reach on one channel, advertisers can design connected experiences that guide audiences through complementary layers of content, increasing engagement depth, recall and conversion across the entire fan journey.

Read our macrotrend report Game-Changers: The Future of Sports Fandom to understand the evolving sports fandom landscape and the emerging opportunities for brands ahead of the 2026 World Cup, hosted in the US, Mexico and Canada.

Strategic opportunity

Design for the second-screen journey – build connected, multi-device ecosystems that guide fans across content, commerce and interaction in real time, turning passive viewing into participatory, high-engagement brand experiences